32 Thirty-third street • 5th floor • Brooklyn, NY 11232 t: 800.426.4613 & 718.499.5877 f: 718.499.5879 Using the Gramercy Tools Carcase Thank you for Purchasing a Gramercy Tools . We’ve put a lot of care and effort into it’s production, so in the interest of your enjoyment, we’ve prepared some tips on its usage.. This saw has been hand filed and set, with a canted blade. We feel that these features and other features of late eighteenth century saws that this saw is based on will help you cut more accurately, faster, smoother, and with less effort.

How to Hold the Saw: The handle is designed to ensure your hand is in the correct position for comfortable sawing, even for extended periods. Hold the saw like a pistol, with your index finger outstretched. Only three fingers actually curl under the handle. If you wrap all four fingers around a saw handle, there is a tendency to make a fist, which leads to cramping. You would also have less directional control. For these reasons, the handle is designed for the three-fingered grip shown above. The handle should sit snugly in the upper part of your hand so that you can easily control the saw with your thumb and forefinger. This is the key to accurate sawing. Crosscutting: The crosscut carcase saw is one of the most used in the shop. You will use it for trimming all sorts of parts to length and for sawing shoulders on joints – especially tenons. Crosscut Teeth are shaped like two rows of little knives. They sever the fibres on each side of the blade, making a kerf through which the saw can easily pass. A common technique when marking out precise cuts for joinery is to incise a sharp line with a knife or , and then remove a “V” of material on the waste side, making a channel for the saw to ride in. More importantly, you end up with the kind of sharp shoulder line you want for a clean-looking joint. With the saw tilted nose down, push forward at the far corner, starting the cut. With each stroke lower the angle of the saw until it is level and cutting the entire length of the cut. Work slowly and easily, letting the saw do the work, and paying attention to both vertical and horizontal orientation of the blade. With practice, cutting will become second nature. For cross-cutting stock to length and rough cutting for mitres, etc. A Bench Hook is a useful accessory. It can be constructed quickly and simply out of any scrap wood you might have. It’s a suitable and more expedient solution than clamping for most cuts, and it functions as a sacrificial work surface; the saw will exit the work cleanly without cutting into your bench. Hold the work down with your free hand, leaning into the stop, using your thumb as a for the saw to run against. Rip Cutting: Rip carcase saws are classically used to saw out the cheeks of tenons or to cut larger dovetails. Rip teeth are shaped like a row of little , so you want to saw “uphill,” or with the grain of the wood for a smooth cut that shaves the tops of the fibers. Cutting “downhill,” or ripping into the ends of the grain, will feel jerky and make a messy cut. To start a dovetail cut, rest the saw teeth flat on the wood, tilt the toe up slightly, and just push. The usual way of cutting tenons is to the wood at a diagonal in the . This way you can see both top and side when you saw. To start, rest the saw on the top corner of the tenon and just push. Then reverse the wood and saw the other diagonal, then with the work clamped straight finish the cut square. In both instances of ripping: • USE NO DOWNWARD PRESSURE. Relax and push the saw straight forward, starting the cut. If you tense up or tilt the saw up or down on the work, the saw will jam. • With the first stroke done, ease up and return the saw to the starting position, keeping the saw in the kerf just made. Do another stroke the same way, easily, relaxed, with no pressure. The saw blade is thin, so if you start cutting askew, the blade will bend and bind in the cut. Be attuned to that feedback and you will quickly learn to saw straight. Relax your hand and your body, and just pay attention to the saw. Cutting Square: The ability to make straight, square cuts comes from two things: sensing the orientation of the saw and being able to follow a line. If you hold the saw in your outstretched hand and rotate your wrist clockwise and counterclockwise a bit, you might notice that the saw doesn’t seem rotate evenly. What you are sensing is referred to as the hang, That is to say, the general relationship between the angle of the handle and the angle of the blade, influenced by the weight and angle of the brass back. If you rest the teeth on a surface and rotate your wrist again (pivoting on the teeth) the blade will feel ever-so-slightly top-heavy. Understanding this will allow you to develop a feeling for that ‘sweet spot’ where the blade is hanging vertical, which will aid you considerably when orienting the saw for cuts. Following a line is a little more tricky with a than it is with a (backless) handsaw, owing to the curtailed ability to english the stiffer blade and the comparatively short cuts one is prone to make. If you can hold the saw straight and get the cut started the saw should continue to track along the same direction. If you find you’re having consistent tracking issues, shift your body slightly, rather than your arm, to finely compensate for any sideways influence you might be introducing to the cut. We hope you enjoy your saw. Please call or e-mail us if you have any questions.

A Note on Sharpening: Eventually, with enough use, a saw will dull and need sharpening. We recommend a long, slender, triangular (sometimes called three-square) saw for sharpening your Gramercy Tools Carcase Saw. After repeated sharpening, the teeth will possibly require setting and possibly jointing. None of these activities are hard to do, but practice makes perfect, and we recommend reading up on the subject prior to sharpening your own saws. We offer a saw sharpening service at a nominal charge. See our website for more details.

*• ALWAYS WEAR EYE PROTECTION WHEN USING TOOLS •*

E-mail: [email protected] • © 2008 www.gramercytools.com GT-CSAW-HOWTO1-2